


Gifts

by Sunlite



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: ? - Freeform, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Fluff, I think its fluffy for the regular timeline, M/M, angsty, comfort/comfort, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 17:04:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17165864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunlite/pseuds/Sunlite
Summary: Blithe has an impeccably bad sense of time, but Eugene spends his Christmas with him anyway.





	Gifts

**Author's Note:**

> Hey!! sorry this is a little later in the day, I was spending a Christmas of my own. I adore the feedback for this ship, its super rare and I'm kind of the only one writing stuff for it anyway, but I love it and enjoy writing it. Hope you guys enjoy this, even if you're reading it a different day c=

It’s December.

 

Blithe has made it through the summer, although he spent the end of it and the months bleeding into Autumn in the hospital. He supposes getting shot in the throat can really do that to you.

 

It’s dark. It’s cold. It’s Bastogne, and he’s alive.

 

He’s shivering, violently, and he has been since he arrived. There are no fires to make and no stars to be seen. He thinks it’s almost Christmas – he doesn’t know. He’s ridiculously bad at time, no matter how many times the guys remind him when he asks. Roe was the one who could always tell you what time and second it was to the dot, something he whispered he learned when he was a kid with a brief smile and -

 

Roe.

He turns to the sound of snow crunching beneath boots behind him and sees a flash of red and worn-out American boots, hunched shoulders and the fear of being shot. _Roe._

 

“Hey,” he says easily, sliding into the foxhole next to him. He has bags under his eyes, but he seems perkier. Like he was excited to come sit with him, which is kind of sweet.

“Hey,” Blithe croaks, and his voice never really did fully heal. It’s just a little bit scratchier than it used to be.

“Still cold?” He asks, still looking at him. Blithe almost wants to laugh at this, but all he can manage to do is furrow his eyebrows in confusion.

 

“I’m always cold, Gene.”

 

Eugene shakes his head at this, like he missed the point he was trying to make and didn’t know how to phrase it, waving his hands in desperation, still lost. “No, I didn’t know – if I could -“

 

Oh.

 

They’ve done this before. He nods frantically, and immediately starts to clamber over one of Roe’s legs to sit curled inbetween them, sliding his helmet off and placing his ear over Eugene’s heart. It’s something they do rarely, because Eugene always likes to be on his feet and it’s never dark enough and there is never enough fog and there is rarely a time when someone doesn’t need him, but they do it enough. It calms them both down, somehow, and it’s just a little warmer than the freezing snow.

Really, he does it more for Eugene than for warmth. He does it so Gene can sleep, so he can feel Blithe in his arms and remind himself he’s not foxholes away and potentially dead, he’s in his arms and sort-of-kind-of warm. And he can feel when Gene gets the nightmares, his heart beating too fast and the shaking from everything but the cold. All he can do is shakily grab his hand, his own deadly cold, and rub circles on his palms. And when it’s bad, and it’s foggy enough, he’ll wake him up with gentle kisses, and Gene will sigh and let him.

 

They’re their own sort of bravery.

 

Eugene shutters and sighs, arms falling around him. This is something they needed. Cuddling, although horribly needed in the stark weather, is still taboo. But so is kissing and being in love with another man, so. Blithe doesn’t think too much on that. All he can think is it’s almost Christmas and he should probably get him a present, which could mean running around weaving inbetween front lines searching for something Gene hasn’t already searched and scavenged. _He doesn’t even know –_

 

“Gene?” He says, quiet and sudden. Roe rests his chin on his head, a small listening cue. He really, really can’t stop shivering. “What do you want for Christmas?”

He can _feel_ it take him off guard. He just sighs, hears the air expand throughout him like his lungs were his own, catches all the meanings of tired on the way.

“Dunno.” He says. “Home.”

 

Blithe hums in agreement. He can only partly relate; he loves his ma like no one in the world, loves baking with her and even doing the work errands she sends him on. But so far, Roe is as close to the real feeling of _home._ It’s been a long, long time since he’s actually been home. He loves Eugene Roe even though he knows Eugene isn’t sure if he loves him back.

 

_(Love is such a strong word. It’s a dedication – I love you. I love who you are and everything that defines you, I love your jokes and your laugh and, in this moment, and all the moments before it, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. And it may not be like that in the future, but - I love you.)_

“I just didn’t know if you really wanted morphine, is all,” he says, nervous. He has no morphine. He’s afraid of searching when Roe has been for weeks, and he’s not even allowed to be shot.

“I’ll take it,” He says easily, because he gives way more than he gets and anything else would be too much.

 

He thinks, for a second, before giving up. He still has his morphine on him, because he’s supposed to be Roe’s last stop for it - and he has some on him if he gets hurt and Roe doesn’t, which kind of makes him sick. He pulls it out of one of his pockets (first place Gene looks are the pockets, he’s been under his hands before) and holds it. Eugene says nothing, eyeing him silently.

 

“I’m sorry it’s not wrapped,” he says. “I’m- I’m actually pretty good at wrapping. Couldn’t find any paper,” He jokes, looking up at him with a waiting smile.

“Well today is your lucky day then,” Eugene nods thoughtfully, eyebrows raised. “Mine is.”

And his smile is falling, for a second, before he realizes how good Gene is at joking with a blank face. And it’s back again, along with Gene’s hands after digging through his own pockets.

 

It’s a bar of chocolate. Wrapped, technically, in the Hershey’s wrapper. He snickers, before realizing he hasn’t had chocolate in a long, long time and snatching it out of his hands.

 

“Where’d you – “ He trails off, looking at Eugene. His eyes are sad, in the tired medical way they are. He decides maybe it’d be better if he didn’t ask. The smaller breaks are all he can give him these days.

“Thank you,” he says instead. _He wants to kiss him._ He wants to, badly, and he knows he can and Eugene will let him, but he can never work up the courage. He looks at his hands, fiddling with the morphine before handing it to him, not looking up. He got him a Hershey’s bar.

 

He wants to kiss him.

 

He unwraps the bar, instead, bites off a piece and goes back to resting his head on Gene. The chocolate feels like heaven, and maybe it’s just because he hasn’t had it in a while or maybe it’s just the fact that anything is better than the shit they have to feed them, but he’s so so grateful. He sighs, feeling a little less cold than frozen, a little like heaven on the inside.

 

They sit in silence, after that – they are left to the faint ringing of a shot through the air and the hollow sound the cold makes, like gusts of wind without movement, like the solid real feeling of death on your shoulders. But it’s good, somehow, sitting with Gene. He’d rather _this_ than just himself. He realizes the man in question is still awake – staring coldly ahead, watching the front line. This – _he shouldn’t be –_

“You can sleep,” He says, barely a whisper. “I can watch the line.”

Gene tightens his arms, a little, like he’s protective; like it’s his own way of saying _you ain’t goin nowhere and neither am I._ “You need your sleep,” he mutters back.

 

“You need it more than I do.”

 

Blithe isn’t a fighter. He has never been one, down to his core. He avoids fights, usually, and firing bullets is a whole different side he doesn’t even want to think about. He’s passively stubborn, in the way he can’t say many others are. And he _knows_ he’s right - If anyone needs to sleep for the next 100 years, it’s Eugene. And Spina, too. Gene is definitely a fighter, and maybe not in the fists and the bloody noses, but maybe more in the sharp stares and cold tones. Brash, silent, a spark from nowhere, and gone all over again as you stand in the aftershock.

 

“It’s okay,” he reassures, “I’ll be okay.”

 

Gene hums. He turns himself around, back to chest and gun a little closer, just to make him feel better. Blithe still holds the chocolate with horribly shaky hands, misses his mouth a couple times, eats what’s left. And he just holds him, arms around his waist and head on his shoulder, for once just trying to get some sleep. And its cold outside, and it’s been cold outside, and it always will be the longer they stay here, like The Allies frozen fingertips are dusting The Germans faces, hoping the frostbite on their eyelashes will distract them from the bombs above. And maybe his throat is a little scratchier and he’s breaking more social boundaries than acceptable, but he’s made his home and he’s alive.

 

And it’s okay, and they’re okay. He’s finished the chocolate and shoved the wrapper in his pant pocket, settles on watching the fog touch the snow again. He can feel Eugene’s breathing begin to slow, _barely_ , the tension leaving his shoulders more and more and finally –

He’s asleep.

 

He does not feel bad about it, Eugene sleeping.  He really, truly _doesn’t_ feel bad about the missed opportunities and the things he wished he said but didn’t, because there isn’t much to say. Blithe can always tell and Gene can a little too, and words are too loud for the quiet moments spent in his foxhole, anyway. And when Gene wakes up tomorrow, he’ll tell him he’s awake by the soft kisses on his neck, like he always does, dragging him out of his daydreams. Or tomorrow they’ll both wake up (him metaphorically) to the sound of screams in the far-off distance or trees splintering, and it will rattle them both.

So Blithe got no kisses tonight, but he got a chocolate bar, and he promises himself he’ll get some tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, if he’s lucky. He has Eugene, no matter what they wake up to, no matter how many kisses he has to steal. The one and only Eugene Roe, in his arms.

 

“Merry Christmas, Gene,” He whispers, and Eugene does not answer.


End file.
